


the worst generation

by floralathena



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Multi, american vandal AU, dustin. you see my dick pic?, tags will be updated along with fic... assuming the fic ever gets updated, this works as a fun oneshot but i do hope to continue it, you don't really need to have seen vandal to read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 21:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19185619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralathena/pseuds/floralathena
Summary: The Hawkins High School Morning Show has a total crew of ten people, most of whom are Mike’s best friends in the world. It's awesome until somebody takes a baseball bat to 27 cars in the staff parking lot and deletes the security footage. Security footage that only the Morning Show cast and crew had access to.His sister’s dumbass ex-boyfriend gets pulled out of class, interrogated, and expelled, so now the crew is down to the nine people who actually have some respect for the program and Mike has something interesting to report in tomorrow’s morning news. Mike wants to be happy about it, god, he wants to be celebrating this victory over stupid jocks everywhere, but he can’t.Because there’s a little voice in his head that just can't be satisfied, and it's telling him that Steve Harrington might be innocent.





	the worst generation

“It just doesn’t make sense!”

“And your theory does?”

“It makes more sense than your Barbara Holland theory-”

“That was a hypothetical and you know it!”

Dustin and Lucas keep moving the thumbtacks back and forth. 

“Guys, be nice to the evidence board,” Will calls without looking over to where Lucas and Dustin have begun arguing over a certain screenshot’s categorization.

“Sorry, Will,” they both say. It’s become a regular refrain. Will is pretty particular about his evidence board. Mike can't blame him- it's a masterpiece of color-coding the likes of which he's only ever seen in his sister's old notebooks.

Max is throwing a rubber band ball up into the air and catching it over and over again. Her feet are up on Mr. Clarke’s desk and she’s leaning back as far as his chair will allow, swivelling from side to side. El is sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking through printouts of text conversations and Instagram posts. Her chin is resting in her hands and half of her short curly hair is just barely pulled up with a neon pink scrunchie that Mike doesn’t recognize. She probably borrowed it from Max. 

Mike is leaning over Will’s shoulder, their chairs pushed close together so that they can both see the laptop screen and easily reach the touchpad. 

“Do we really need to include that bit from the game where Billy hit him in the face?”

Mike sighs. “It’s about establishing his character, Will, we have to-”

“I just don’t see what it says about Steve. It just shows that Billy’s an asshole.”

The clip in question is playing on a loop. It shows Steve Harrington catching Billy Hargrove’s elbow in the face during a big game and crashing to the floor.

“Well, it’s- it’s about his history of conflict, and, you know, violence.” Mike gestures at the screen aimlessly.

Steve’s chest is heaving and his hair is damp with sweat as he wipes blood away from his lip. He watches with a look of disgust and anger as Billy makes a shot and the crowd goes wild. The loop begins again. 

Will is tapping his fingers on the desk. “I don’t know. It’s a good clip, you know, but I just don’t think it’s really relevant yet. Like, we should save it for when we dive into the school board’s case against him. If we put it in the intro people are just gonna wonder what’s going on.”

“I guess,” Mike says. “You’re probably right.” He reaches out to press the little x, and just like that the video is closed. 

"We should totally use something that shows him playing, though," Will says, glancing at Mike with a small smile. Mike starts to scroll through all of the miscellaneous video files he collected for B-roll. Most of them are from Nancy's phone, and the names are auto-generated, so the folder's just a grid of videos with blurred thumbnails titled "Snapchat- 1980471750.mp4" or "20181027_164836.mp4," none of which mean jack shit. They need another twelve seconds of  _ something _ , or Mike needs to rewrite his introductory script, and at this point sitting next to Will watching a ton of cell phone footage of Steve Harrington back before he got dumped by Mike's sister seems like the better option.

Dustin's voice is slowly raising. He's back on his Tommy H rant again.

"He's a liar, man! Everybody knows that his parents' place in the Alps was just an AirBnb in Colorado."

"Okay, but that doesn't mean he didn't see Steve do it! They're friends, why the hell would he make-"

"Have you seen them hanging out lately? No! Steve told us they had a falling out last year!" 

"And you just trust him?" Lucas asks disbelievingly.

"Over Tommy?" Max cuts in, catching her rubber band ball and holding on to it. "The guy that very loudly mentioned how he got to third base with Laurie Rhodes in the middle of his interview? No way. I'm with Dustin, he's a liar."

Lucas rolls his eyes and abandons the theory board, collapsing into a nearby chair. "That was at camp."

El looks up from her web of screenshots and her brows furrow. "So?"

Mike has long since stopped scrolling through video files. "El, shit goes down at Camp Miniwaka." 

Will gives him a mildly disapproving look which lacks authority, seeing as he's abandoned the hunt for B-roll as well. Both of them have now completely twisted around from their desk to join the conversation. Mike glances at the screen and sees that Will's reached the crime scene photos. He gets it- looking at them makes him kind of queasy. It's a lot of shattered glass.

"Last summer, there was a threesome in a canoe." Dustin adds helpfully, which makes Max gag and throw her ball at him. It just misses the theory board, bouncing harmlessly off the wall and rolling back, stopping on the legs of Lucas's chair. Dustin grins at her broadly as he cuts another piece of pink string. She flips him off.

" _ Anyway _ ," Lucas says, picking up the ball, "Steve got with Laurie at camp a couple years ago. Why couldn't Tommy?"

Mike frowns. "Wait, he what?"

"Yeah, it was, like, right before he and Nancy got together. I saw it on the post." Lucas says casually, tossing the ball up into the air with one hand and catching it with the other.

El stands up, stretching with a swift exhale. "What post?"

"The Hookup List," Will says. He rests his chin on the back of his chair. "It's this one wooden post in the rec cabin, kind of tucked into the corner near the bathrooms. People carve their initials into it whenever they hook up over the summer."

"God, Hawkins is so weird," Max says. 

"Yeah, like California's all classy," Dustin retorts.

"It's not too bad." El is bent over, sweeping all of her papers into a messy pile. "I like it better here, though." 

The fact that El's been to California is news to Mike. She's like that, though, always full of surprises. It's cool to have Jane Eleanor Hopper for a friend. In the two years since she came to Hawkins, she's become just as much a part of their group as any of the original Party members. The only real thing that sets her (and Max, Mike guesses) apart from the guys is the fact that they don't already know her whole life's story by virtue of living it right alongside her. 

Max's mouth hangs wide open. "We're discussing this later."

"Why are we talking about a hookup list?" El asks, unceremoniously dropping her stack of papers down onto the desk where Lucas sits. She takes the chair next to him and catches the rubber band ball just before it lands in his right hand. 

"Because Steve is trustworthy, and Tommy's a liar," Dustin says. He's writing "LAURIE RHODES" on an index card. Mike's going to have to give Dustin his own board for unnecessarily charting out romantic connections if there's any hope of maintaining the primary board's integrity.

"Look, I'm not- I'm not saying I don't trust Steve, alright? We all know that he's a good guy." Lucas pauses, making deliberate eye contact with Max before continuing. "But the  _ audience _ doesn't know that, and it's on us to prove it to them."

"Dude, screw the audience, we need to prove it to the cops and the school board!"

Mike groans. "Am I the only one here who isn't just assuming that Steve's innocent?"

"Mike, you're the one who wanted to challenge the school board in the first place," Will gently reminds him.

Mike doesn't have a ready response. "I just…" He huffs. "You guys can't deny that Steve's capable."

Dustin groans as he pins the index card to the board, wrapping pink string around the thumbtack and carefully guiding the string to Steve's own index card. "Come on, Mike, really?"

Max finally takes her feet down from the desk. "Physically, sure-" she starts as she rolls Mr. Clarke's chair toward the rest of the group.

"But, dude, he cried at Detective Pikachu," Lucas finishes.

"He also nearly killed your brother," Mike says pointedly.

Max's face freezes over and she narrows her eyes at Mike. "My  _ step _ -brother, and he was-"

"I  _ know _ , Max," Mike interrupts, "but Steve's strong, and he's got a history, regardless of his motivations." Max scoffs, but Mike goes on, leaning forward and raising his voice. "Can you  _ honestly _ tell me that you don't think Steve would be capable of doing something like this, if he was angry enough, if he had a good enough reason?" 

Nobody replies, and the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch. Will sighs and turns around, logging out of the laptop and and pushing it over to Mike, who grabs it and begins wrestling it into his backpack's undersized laptop sleeve.

El suddenly slaps the surface of her desk. "I forgot to eat."

Max slams a cheese stick onto El's desk as she stalks out without sparing Mike a look. Mike unzips his backpack's front pocket and pulls out a slightly crushed strawberry Pop-Tart, which he hands to El with a weak smile before leaving. 

Will walks quietly beside him as they head toward Advanced Studio Art and Studies In Fiction respectively. The hallway is bustling, and Mike hears snippets of conversations. People talking about the school musical, their prom dates, what they got on their Spanish tests. He thinks about Steve Harrington working in the ice cream parlor at the mall. Mike stops at the art room door, and Will waits patiently. 

"I just…" Mike starts. Words won't come.

"Tomorrow," Will says. "We'll figure things out tomorrow." He pats Mike on the shoulder before he enters the room, and Mike walks the extra two doors down to his class wondering what, exactly, Will's planning to figure out.

-

MIKE: Could you please state your name and who you are?

_ A handsome young man looks directly into the camera with a charming smile. He is sitting at a kitchen table in a fairly nice upper-class home, with a pool visible in the background through sliding glass doors. _

STEVE: Hi. I'm Steve Harrington, host of the Hawkins High Morning-

MIKE: No, no, god, I meant-  _ (he sighs)  _ Okay, first of all, don't look at the camera, alright, look at me.

STEVE: Got it.

_ He turns slightly to his right, looking just off-camera. _

WILL: Okay, that's good, like that.

MIKE: Second of all, don't- don't do that.

STEVE: Do what?

MIKE: That! That whole Steve Harrington bit.

STEVE: Uh, I don't-

WILL: Just relax, Steve, be yourself. Just say your name and why we're here filming you.

STEVE: Oh, okay. My bad. 

WILL: No, you're fine.

MIKE: Alright, one more time.

STEVE: Okay.  _ (he takes a deep breath) _ Uh, I'm Steve Harrington. And I'm here because people think I did it. 

MIKE: Did what?

STEVE: Went all Carrie Underwood in the parking lot. 

MIKE: Went all… 

WILL: Could you be a little more specific?

STEVE: Yeah, sorry, man. Uh, they think that I smashed up all the cars in the staff parking lot with a baseball bat. 

MIKE: And did you?

STEVE: No. No, I didn't.

_ A montage begins. Images of the vandalized cars, their hoods dented, lights smashed, and windows cracked, are intercut with B-roll footage from around Hawkins High and footage of Steve Harrington as the backdrop for opening credits. This ends on a title card: AMERICAN VANDAL. _

_ Hard cut to an image of the Hawkins High staff parking lot, cars all vandalized.  _

MIKE  _ (narrating) _ : On February 15th, 2019, twenty-seven cars in the Hawkins High faculty lot were vandalized. The only clue left at the scene of the crime? A battered baseball bat which authorities believe to have been used to deal the damage. The security footage from the time of the incident was deleted, something which only a select few students could have accomplished. Within the next twenty-four hours, Steve Harrington, an athlete with a history of violence and vandalism who had access to the security footage, was called before the school board. Following a three-hour meeting, he was expelled.

_ Fade into silent footage of Steve Harrington and Mike Wheeler discussing something serious. There are a few documents scattered on the kitchen table. _

MIKE  _ (narrating) _ : Look, what you're about to see might look like an open-and-shut case. It certainly seemed that way to the school board, a group which includes Steve's own father. What you don't know, and need to keep in mind, is that I absolutely  _ hate _ Steve's guts. He is the dumbest, most annoying person I've ever known. When my sister dumped him, I took all of my friends out for ice cream to celebrate. I am the last person who would ever want to do Steve Harrington a favor. So if I'm making an entire documentary to try and find the truth and possibly prove Steve innocent… that should tell you something.

**Author's Note:**

> as always i owe all of this to my angel sarah!!! say hi to her @bi-harrington on tumblr or @mjolnirbreaker here on ao3. my tumblr is @discosteves and i'd love to chat!!
> 
> i hope to keep updating this fic and deliver the story that i've got plotted out in my mind, but shit happens. if this ends up being a oneshot, i hope you enjoyed it <3


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